Recently I decided to make use of Amazon's 30-day free trial on Kindle Unlimited, a service which lets you borrow as many books as you want from Amazon's selection for a flat monthly fee. I have no intention of paying this monthly fee or otherwise using this service outside of my free trial, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to read some (temporarily) free books. So, I am trying to read as many books from the Kindle Unlimited library as I can before my trial runs out.
Some of the books I have been reading during this period are those in Amazon's Disorder collection, a series of short stories and novellas by six different authors. While the individual plots vary, the stories are united thematically in that they each deal with semi-realistic but disturbing and unsettling events. I definitely preferred some stories over others, but so far they have all delivered on their promise to "get inside your head" and provoke feelings of mild to severe horror. In this post, I am going to take you through three of these stories and give you my thoughts on them, with the other three reviews coming in a later post.
Now, before I get into the individual stories, I feel the need to address the unethical elephant in the room: Amazon. Unfortunately, this short story collection is an Amazon original project, meaning that the stories are published by and primarily sold through Amazon. This is a problem, given that I consider Amazon to be a harmful and morally reprehensible company. They monopolise the online shopping market, dodge taxes, and mistreat their workers. I am normally so reluctant to promote their website on my blog that I will even censor the company's name, so you can imagine that I was unsure whether or not to review these books here.
In the end, I decided to review these books anyway in the interests of supporting the authors, not Amazon. That is not to say that my thought process negates any harm I might be doing by supporting such a horrible company, and I can absolutely respect that some people may not want to purchase these stories due to their proximity to Amazon. It's a sad fact that Amazon's growth has become something of a vicious circle, making it harder and harder for people to avoid interacting with the company, as their market dominance grows and "ethical consumerism" becomes more and more of a challenge (especially for those of us without much money to spare). All of that said, I am very happy to hear others' perspectives on this, especially if you hate Amazon as much as I do and have suggestions for how we can avoid supporting them.
Also, just to reiterate: the Kindle Unlimited free trial lasts a month and will run for the full 30 days even if you "cancel" it immediately after subscribing, so you won't have to pay any money. Just saying.
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With that out of the way, let's get into specifics. As I mentioned before, the series is comprised of six stories by six different authors. Although the evil A-site lists them in a specific order, as far as I can tell this is arbitrary and the stories can be read in any order you want. I am listing them in the order I read them, so you can see how my perception of each story was impacted by the ones I read before it.
The Best Girls by Min Jin Lee
This was the book that first piqued my interest in the collection, with an intriguing plot summary and an author who I'd heard great praise for (Min Jin Lee being the author of Pachinko and Free Food for Millionaires, both popular novels). Having now read half of the books in the set, The Best Girls remains my favourite so far. It's a haunting story of gender roles and family sacrifice, specifically how they manifest in Korean culture. I thought this story was powerful and felt very real - perhaps especially because it turned out to be based on a true story. Min Jin Lee's writing is emotionally-affecting without being overly sentimental, and the twist at the end truly shocked me.
Anonymous by Uzodinma Iweala
This story was a disorientating read, in a way I believe was intentional on the part of the author. It focuses on a Black American man who is stopped by border security upon his arrival back in US. What follows is horrific in its reality, but more so in its apparent meaninglessness and absurdity. Iweala gives a great sense of the helplessness and isolation of the protagonist, made all the more painful by the knowledge that things like this are far from just fiction for people of colour around the world. More than anything else, it is the existential horror of Anonymous's brutality that sticks in my mind.
Ungirls by Lauren Beukes
The plot summary of Ungirls sounded perhaps the most ambitious and definitely the most fascinating of the six stories, which is maybe why the result felt a little disappointing. Dealing with plot points ranging from sex dolls to prostitution to doxxing to mass shootings to Jordan Peterson-esque public speakers (I mean come on, we all know that was meant to be a Peterson clone right?), the story pulled together a lot of threads but fell just short of tying them together. I think Beukes has a lot of fascinating ideas, like the connection of the Barbie Liberation Organisation to sex doll production, but this book didn't quite do them justice. Ungirls would probably have worked better as a full-length novel or a slimmed-down short story. As it is, it sort of awkwardly straddles the two. That said, it was still thought-provoking and I don't regret reading it.
With that, we have reached the end of Part 1 of this review. Please stay tuned (subscribed?) for the next instalment. In the mean time, please feel free to share your thoughts on these books in the comments. I would also very much like to hear your feelings about Amazon and whether we can use it to purchase books while still remaining ethical.
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